CHAPTER 15
She was going to be the death of him. Unlike his wife, with whom he should have grown happily old and who had instead inadvertently fated him to eternal life, Nim—his intended salvation—would be his doom.
Jonah just hadn’t thought it would be so soon. And against an angelic host, not even the tenebrae, who were supposed to be his prey.
She sauntered toward him. The snug black pants clung so low, he caught a glimpse of the reven gleaming at her hip bone under the hitched-up hem of her skimpy tank top. She stopped in front of him and handed him his wallet.
His pulse spiked, and he tucked the wallet into his back pocket, refusing to wince when the angry thrust yanked his jeans taut across his suddenly attentive shaft. At least he could die happy, his body reminded him.
His tone was harsher than he intended when he asked, “What are you doing here?”
Before she could answer—and he could see her shuffling through the various possibilities in her head—the man across the garage raised his voice. “What are you doing in my house, talya?”
“I knocked,” Jonah said. “No one answered. The door was unlocked.”
“Because no one else in this neighborhood would have dared test it.”
“Just as well you don’t live in my neighborhood.” Jonah didn’t bother mentioning that the door had been unlocked after he got through with it. “We lock our doors. We keep our pants on too.”
Nanette shuddered. “Jonah, may I introduce you to my warden, Cyril Fane?”
With the tenebraeternum providing entirely enough difficulties, the league kept little more than haphazard records on the angelic host. They were secretive even among their own, and downright hostile toward the talyan. Jonah knew only that the wardens were highly placed among the spheres.
But he recognized a challenge when he saw one. “Nanette, Nim, perhaps you should wait outside.”
“Don’t presume to order the host from any sphere,” Fane growled.
“Or me either,” Nim said.
The chill that spread through the garage was tinged with feminine ire . . . and the arid, metallic tang of the demon realm.
Fane stiffened. “Talya, take your feral symballein and leave before I’m forced to torch my house to rid the defilement—with you inside.”
“Please, Jonah,” Nanette whispered. “Mr. Fane has been a friend to the league in ways you can’t understand.”
“With friends like these . . .” Nim muttered, just loud enough.
“I’d make a worse enemy,” Fane said.
Jonah looked at Nanette, who stared back with imploring eyes. She trusted Fane enough to let him minister to the haints she’d taken on. And Jonah trusted her. But Fane . . .
Jonah slapped the hook against the garage door button on the wall beside him with a crack of metal on plastic. The door grumbled up in a wash of late-summer light and heat.
Fane squinted his annoyance. The host, Jonah knew, hated revelation—the public kind, not the end-of-the-Bible kind—almost as much as they hated demons. He could hope that being exposed before the neighborhood Joneses would prevent the angelic possessed from recreating any scenes from The Exorcist.
“Nim.” He chucked his car keys. “Back my car out so Nanette can leave too.”
She caught the keys. “Trying to get me out of the way?”
He didn’t see any need to confirm her words. “Nanette, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
Nim muttered as she headed out of the garage. “Now I’m an inconvenience.”
He didn’t respond to that either.
Nanette swallowed. “It’s nothing. But I’m not leaving quite yet.”
Jonah turned to Fane, whose gold-sparked stare had locked the smaller woman in place. “Why is she frightened of you?”
“Because I am warden and she has transgressed.” He waved his hand irritably. “And because I’m terrifying. But I promise I am merely composing a stern lecture in my head, not planning to beat her, so you can stop glowering.” The fulminating gilt of his eyes faded, revealing tiny lines at the corners that made him look weary. “I suggest you not be so indulgent with your symballein.”
That unfamiliar word again. Jonah fixed it in his head. “The teshuva have never been noted for their mercy.”
Fane smiled crookedly. “Indeed not.”
“Jonah,” Nanette protested.
He gave her a look. “Remember who earned you that stern talking-to. If you wish, say a prayer for her tonight.”
She subsided and stood back with Fane as Jonah stalked past them to the open door.
“Talya,” Fane called. When Jonah paused, the angelic possessed crossed his arms. “I’ll have words with you too about this alleged hunt for the djinn.”
“Offering the assistance of the spheres?”
“I think you know better.”
Jonah pulled out his wallet—his thin, decimated wallet—and thumbed an @1 business card from one of the inner pockets. He laid the card on the hood of the motor home. “Have your people call my people.”
“That would be a good start,” Nanette said eagerly.
Fane snorted. “You know better too.”
Jonah hesitated another moment, but Nanette gave him a tiny head shake. She looked more forlorn than truly frightened, so he turned away. He wasn’t doing her any favors by keeping Nim around to spur the higher angel’s temper.
The garage door started creaking down before he’d quite cleared the interior, but he didn’t duck.
Nim was in the driver’s seat of the well-used hatchback, and he contemplated booting her out. Then he just sighed and slipped into the passenger’s seat.
“Where’s Nanette?” she asked. “Is he keeping her prisoner? Should I ram the garage?”
He gave her a look.
She put the car into reverse. He didn’t speak as they left the curving roads of the ritzy subdivision.
When they merged onto the straight shot back into the city, she finally cleared her throat. “How did you find me?”
“There was a giant, blinking neon sign over the house that said ‘Nim is getting into trouble here.’ ”
“I’ve been looking for a new place to dance. Maybe Fane will let me keep that sign.”
At the thought of the haughty angelic possessed—and Nim dancing anywhere nearby—Jonah gritted his teeth. “I’m sure you can just make another one.”
Her palm rubbed a quarter circle arc over the steering wheel. “And you’d come for me there too?”
Was that why she’d run off? To see if he’d follow? He almost snapped. But he hesitated at the odd note in her voice. If he didn’t know better, he’d call it wistfulness. “I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The bond between us doesn’t care when or where or why. I will come for you.”
She didn’t turn her gaze from the road, but she rubbed her palm reflexively down her thigh. The motion captured his attention until he forced himself to look away.
“Damn it.” She smacked her hand on the steering wheel again. “I forgot my shopping bags in Nanette’s van. I don’t suppose it’s a good idea to go back now.”
“Why did you go to the church at all?”
“I went shopping.”
He shifted in his seat, barely feeling the depleted wallet under his backside. “Can you buy forgiveness?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand. People like you and Nanette never do.”
“People like—”
“Good people,” Nim burst out. “You don’t understand doing it wrong.” She sighed. “I was scared.”
“Of coming home with my empty wallet?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You don’t really care about that.”
“Jilly will. Her old life with a nonprofit gave her an appreciation for making every penny count.”